Although it’s the sort of thing that any American grade-school student should know, the answer to the question “Who invented the airplane?” hasn’t always (or everywhere) been so.

Had that same question been posed to a Soviet citizen, he (or she) would most likely have responded with a name you’ve probably never heard before: Alexander Mozhaiskii.

Virtually unknown in the West, Alexander Fedorovich Mozhaiskii (1825-1890) was an Imperial naval officer, engineer, and early aviation pioneer. During the 1870s and 1880s he conducted a series of aerial experiments that included the 1882 launch of a steam-powered flying machine. However, as the flat wings affixed to Mozhaiskii’s contraption were incapable of producing lift, the aircraft relied on the momentum produced by rolling down an inclined ramp to become airborne.

Mozhaiskii’s vehicle “flew” in the same way that a Hot Wheels™ racer “flies” via its Thunder Launcher™ playset.

Which is to say, it didn’t.

Still, to this day, some official Russian publications (and the history exhibition at the Russian Air Force Museum in Monino) maintain that Mozhaiskii’s creation is, in fact, the world’s first airplane. No doubt, much of the support for this claim derives from the fact that Mozhaiskii’s device looks somewhat more like a modern airplane than did the Wrights’ design.

Given the propensity of Stalinist-era propagandists to claim Russian credit for the invention of everything from the steam engine, to radio, penicillin, and even baseball (!), Western historians have been prone to dismiss the Mozhaiskii story as just another example of strident Soviet chauvinism.¹ In actuality, the Mozhaiskii claim pre-dates Stalin’s rise to power by almost two decades. The story was advanced as early as 1910 in an article titled “The First Aviators” published in the most prominent tsarist-era newspaper Novoe vremia (The New Times).

Viewed in the broader perspective, such nationalistic claims are not as unusual or outlandish as one might think. The origins of the airplane were contested for decades before and after the Wrights’ first flight at Kitty Hawk. As late as the 1920s some Frenchmen continued to insist that Clément Ader’s bat-shaped Éole (1890) was actually the world’s first airplane. Meanwhile, to this day, many Brazilians insist that one of their native sons, Alberto Santos-Dumont, should be recognized as the pioneer of controlled heavy-than-air flight. Even in the United States, the Wrights’ triumph long went unrecognized by folks who should have known better. It wasn’t until 1914 that officials at the Smithsonian Institution finally acknowledged that the Wright Flyer and not former Smithsonian head Samuel P. Langley’s Great Aerodrome was the first airplane to take to the air.²

So, while the answer to the question “Who invented the airplane?” may now be obvious. It hasn’t always been so.

1. See, for example, the excerpt on “Aviation,” in Richard Stites and James von Geldern, eds., Mass Culture in Soviet Russia: Tales, Poems, Songs, movies, Plays, and Folklore, 1917-1953, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995, pp. 479-486
2. The best discussion of the early controversies involving the Wrights, Ader, and Langley can be found in Richard P. Hallion, Taking Flight: Inventing the Aerial Age from Antiquity through the First World War, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003

With the exception of a few qualified (and reasonable) statements regarding Russia’s historical levels of economic and industrial underdevelopment, it seems that many participants in the discussion are prepared to throw backwardness off of the ship of scholarly analysis.

I think the opponents of backwardness are wrong.

Before going further, I should clarify (in light this post from Nathaniel Knight on 10/24) that I am not interested in backwardness because I find it to be a convenient tool for pontificating about the failings of Russia or Russians. I am not “relentlessly” (or even remotely) “anti-Russian.” Nor am I advocating that “the West is best.” (It isn’t, except when it is.) What I am interested in is the extent to which backwardness, a peculiar, recurring theme in the history of Russia, helps historians to better comprehend the underlying cultural traits and characteristics that have shaped the ways in which Russian citizens and state officials have approached the problematic issue of modernization.

That much having been said, I think that the concept of backwardness is not only useful, it is essential to understanding Russia’s past. Without it, much (if not all) of Russia’s 19th- and 20th-century history is difficult to comprehend.

Here, on 10/24, David Goldfrank ruminated that the West “has been awfully good at setting such trajectories [of development and progress] as the ideal.” I think that comments of this sort reveal the cultural conceit that’s been an undercurrent of the H-Russia discussion from the beginning: namely, that the West forced upon Russians a (false?) consciousness of their “backwardness” in the face of the Western “superiority” (those scare quotes belong to others, not me.)

More concretely, aside from a handful of Harvard intellectuals in the mid-1990s, I’m having trouble thinking of Westerners who have traveled to Russia, carrying suitcases full of plans, intent on transforming the country along European lines. I have much less troubled coming up with numerous Russians who on their own traveled abroad only to return home wondering, “what’s wrong with Russia?” As Alex Martin noted in a much earlier post, it’s been Russians themselves (typically the county’s foremost thinkers and statesmen) who’ve acknowledged, criticized, and attempted to reverse Russia’s backwardness relative to the West. Are those who advocate that backwardness is a Western imposition suggesting that Tsar Peter the Great, Peter Chaadaev, Nikita Murav’ev, Pavel Pestel, Alexander Herzen (and countless others) weren’t thinking for themselves when they identified and condemned Russia’s backwardness while attempting to implement (or merely devise) projects for reform, based on Western models, that would enable Russia to catch-up with the West?

In short, I don’t see the argument that backwardness (together with its attendant concept progress) is a foreign “construct” forced upon the country by Westerners as convincing. In fact, I don’t even see it as an argument.

In a related matter, I am struck by the extent to which the H-Russia discussion has so far overlooked/ignored the historical sub-field that, arguably, has the most to contribute to this debate: the history of science and technology.

Tellingly, as regards science and technology, backward is not a relative, culturally “constructed” term. It is an objective, measurable fact. While it is true that technological progress is not inevitable or guaranteed, the reality is that since the mid-16th century, technology has developed at a dizzying pace (and the West has led the way). Over time, technology has become more complex. Insofar as it has also become capable of undertaking tasks more efficiently and effectively, it has improved. It has become more advanced. [For example, relative to an F-22 Raptor, the Blériot XI that first flew the English Channel in 1909 is backward.]

The point I want to raise is that Russia’s comparable level of technological development has been central to fostering Russians’ perception of their country’s general (social, cultural, political, etc.) backwardness. Moreover, the reality of technological backwardness is key to understanding the history of modern Russia because it has been intimately linked to the formation of Russian national identity, Russian understanding of their nation’s cultural/social development, and, very significantly, the manner in which both statesmen and citizens have attempted to modernize the country.

It is a pattern that has repeated itself with maddening regularity from the dawn of the 18th century to the present: an emerging (or sudden) recognition that Russian technological capabilities are sorely lagging behind those of the country’s western competitors spurs major reform efforts, directed by the state, which are intended to reverse decline and propel Russia into the front ranks of Europe’s leading nations. Seeking to “short cut” development, state agents rely heavily on the importation of advanced foreign technology, methods, and expertise. Improvements are made at great social and economic cost, progress (relative to Russia’s previous level of development) is achieved, only to result, in the span of a few years, in a renewed awareness of Russian backwardness accompanied by new calls for thoroughgoing reform.

In conclusion, it seems to me that the premises underlying much of the current H-Russia discussion are flawed and that the major questions posed thus far are misplaced.

Rather than asking “is backwardness a useful analytical tool?,” historians should be asking “How has technological backwardness shaped Russian responses to the challenges of social, cultural, and political, modernization?”

ScP

During the fall of 1803, and again in the spring of 1804, Garnerin, accompanied by his young wife, former student, and fellow aeronaut, Jeanne-Genevieve, organized a series of paid demonstrations of aerial prowess for the inhabitants of St. Petersburg and Moscow. The public spectacles undertaken by the Garnerins in Russia included both unrestricted flights as well as parachute jumps from tethered balloons, (the latter feats having previously earned Garnerin and his wife renown across the Continent). According to contemporary accounts published in the newspaper Московския ведомости [Moscow Register], the Garnerins’ aerial displays were an immensely popular attraction. They contributed greatly to the “aero-mania” that swept Russian high society in the century’s first decade. They also resulted in a significant, though little known, historical “first:” the first balloon flight by a Russian woman.

The flight occurred on 8 May 1804. The details of the incident, as recorded in [Картина чудных произшествий в мире], [Canvas of the World's Miraculous Events] (Moscow, 1807) indicate that the untethered ascension was anything but routine as “a terrible storm, followed by large amounts of rain and repeated thunder preceded the scheduled balloon flight by half an hour.”

Despite the inclement weather, Mme. Garnerin and a Russian woman (whose name, alas, was not recorded by observers) ascended into the heavens. Following a flight of approximately 45 minutes, during which they rose to just over 6,200 feet in the air, the pair returned to earth having traveled some 13 miles from their point of launch in Moscow. Their landing was undertaken “not without difficulty and danger” as gusting winds continuously buffeted the craft during its descent. Repeatedly, the balloon’s gondola struck the earth only to be launched anew into the air by the tumultuous currents. Finally, the two women were able to toss the aerostat’s anchor overboard and, with the aid of some locals who had rushed to the scene, secure the craft.

The fortitude demonstrated by the two women led the account’s chronicler to conclude that

“Aeronautics has provided us with a new example demonstrating that women are occassionaly even more fearless than men for, to be certain, few of the latter would have been so courageous as to maintain their composure in the face of such thunder and furious heavens.”

ScP